Saturday Status: Ferguson.

What's relevant in Ferguson? What's not?
Watch the videos on the Washington Post and ask:

• If the teen shot to death by police in the Missouri town, Michael Brown, DID steal some cigars from a convenience store clerk in the minutes before his confrontation with the office who shot him, does it matter?

• Could you argue that it helps explain the teen's frame of mind when he was stopped by the officer, who did NOT know about the reported theft.

• If the police officer had been involved in a violent run in with someone minutes before he came across Micheal Brown, would it be relevant? Would it help explain his reactions?

 ALSO: Did the militarization of the police in that small town, and elsewhere, contribute to the violence?
     The chief's comment about "outsiders" way too familiar to Alabamians who remember the slurs of Bull Conner and hundreds of police in Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery and elsewhere.
     Way too many questions with too few answers. Too bad we don't have security camera video of the shooting, as we do of the convenience store incident.
     Let's let the FBI do its investigation.

[Saturday Status is a regular feature of timlennox.com]